Spaceboy Nigeria

Long overdue, but here it is finally.

For those of you who like quick summaries, I think the idea itself is filled with all kinds of potential and the story, while it seems so far to be typical genre stuff is well told and the characters were well introduced. The weakest part of the book for me is the art and colouring. I also really love their little character flyers that they made to promote the book. Excellent stuff and a sign of proper organisation and media-savvy thinking going on behind-the-scenes.

The full review continues below:

Nollywood's Finest Cover

So, I had been waiting to get my hands on the full issue of Nollywood’s Finest for almost a year now. The first time that I heard about it was at the first Comic Book Publisher’s Forum that I attended. Sewedo Nupowaku, the creative mind behind it and the CEO of Revolution Media, the publishers of the comic, told me about the concept he had in mind and even though now I realise I had a different idea in my mind of what it would be, the end result is still quite interesting.

Nollywood’s Finest is yet another take on the classic Cinderella story (complete with evil stepmother and bumbling stepsisters) with the added spice being that it blends typical Nollywood tropes (themselves being fond of the Cinderella-style story) and our entertainment and style industries. This presents us with an augmented Nigerian reality. One minute you are looking at a panel in which the main character, Sessi George wakes up and looks at a poster of musician, Banky W, calling him fan-intimately by his last name, the next, you are looking at a tv show with the logo of one of the more prominent brands in the local media industry.

This flitting back and forth between fantasy and a very immediate reality allows for a certain ease with which I imagine the average non-comic reading punter on the street can get into the story. Spandex and capes this is certainly not.

Okay, back to the story. So, Nollywood’s Finest is a story about Sessi George a young girl in her second year of University that works as a ghostwriter at a prominent entertainment magazine. Her mother dies and her dad remarries, bringing three evil stepladies into Sessi’s life. And then of course there’s a potential Prince Charming in the form of Femi Fernandez, a rich, successful young guy with a well-placed political family. I won’t go into the story of the issue itself, but it sets up a few story threads here and there that might pan out into something more interesting than typical Nollywood fare.

The dialogue in the comic is good, with distinct voices for the various characters introduced and a nice flow in some of the conversations. I had a few reservations about some of the captions though, in particular one that talks about dreams and runs various metaphor that tie into the comic. The quality of this text was not really very good if I am to be blunt, and I am being blunt, and I believe the writer can do a lot better. I also felt that these just came off a bit forced and might actually turn out to be a waste as it provides yet another thread of narration to follow on a page in addition to the dialogue of the characters and didn’t add much to the impact of the story (there’s a cliffhanger at the end of the comic and the narrative on dreams from the beginning is brought in just before the last page to act as a coda to the final panel, but if one even gives just a bit of thought to what is written it is easy to see that it doesn’t sit very comfortably in the role it is trying to play). I am also worried that it may aid in keeping away the very readers that Sewedo and his team are targeting, being more information than necessary to enjoying the comic book.

Overall though, the writing is adequate and I think as they progress with the comic the writer will settle into her role and be free to let the art carry the comic as opposed to at best over-reinforcing it (at worst obscuring it) with her words.

Nollywood's Finest - Femi Fernandez

Now, if you read the summary, you would have seen that my biggest problem came from the art and the colours.

Ibrahim Ganiyu handled pencils on the comic with inking support from Jide Olusanya. I will begin with the art. It is by no means bad and in fact I have seen things many times worse put out by the big publishers in America and elsewhere. The panelling on the majority of the pages is good and in some cases very good. My problem is that sometimes, the panelling is just rough and even the art itself just seems below standard for him. This lack of consistency is my main issue with the artwork. One minute the lines are smooth and straight, the anatomy correct and the panel layout on point, the next it looks like it was rushed to meet deadline. I also have a problem with the fact that a lot of the people look like they are related with similar facial features and face shapes, with only the barest of differences in facial hair and clothing separating the two. I can understand Sessi and her dad, but should Femi Fernandez look like he is her brother as well (unless there’s some big reveal where it turns out Sessi’s mother once had a fling with Femi’s dad and had him before she married Sessi’s dad…)? This just makes me feel like not enough time was spent at the character design stage.

Leaving the character art alone, the backgounds are detailed when they need to be and have a well judged sparseness when they aren’t. There are also some nice photoshop effects and compositions throughout the book that I quite liked as they did look separate from the artwork, but deliberately so and they served to add to the augmented reality feel of the book for me. Sewedo mentioned the possibility of some celebrities appearing in the book at a later stage, if they can keep the effect going at that point I think it could make for a very unique looking book.

Nollywood's Finest - Salome Caxton-George

Now on to the colouring, which I feel is what let down the book the most. The tones are all orange, brown and red which to be frank are not the most enticing colours to the average punter. I like to think that Nigerians are not a bunch of orangey-brown people and I feel this may be the biggest barrier to entry for potential customers. There’s not enough differentiation on the pages and flipping through the comic does not make you stop and look at a page for very long. I feel a more dynamic and less orange colour scheme (like they have in the last 3 pages but with more texture and tones) is something they should stick to for the future issues. Most of the people I showed the comic to noticed the last page and one of the other pages earlier on and both of these use colour better. I also feel this same problem may be letting down the front cover as well. The background is just a shade darker than the characters’ skins and given the nature of the comic book I would have thought that blue skies and normally coloured buildings in the background would have added a lot more impact to the cover and sold what the story was about.

I don’t want to come off as overly harsh as everybody most certainly put in time and sweat to deliver on the comic book and it does stand out as one of the cream of the crop of comics that we have out there right now. I just really want all these issues fixed so that the comic book can do even better than I am sure it is doing now. Nollywood is an international sensation with people young and old and I don’t see a reason why Nollywood’s Finest, that already has more passion, exposure, awareness and talent behind its team than the majority of the people in the Nollywood movie industry shouldn’t do even better.

Nollywood’s Finest issue One is out now at The Hub Media Store in The Palms Shopping Mall in Lekki and at other fine bookstores and supermarkets around Lagos.